Thayer Consultancy Background Brief

ABN # 65 648 097 123

Vietnam’s Intervention in
Cambodia Invasion or
Liberation?
January 9, 2019

We request your assessment of several issues related to Vietnam’s victory in its self-
defence southwest border war with the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia and the
joint Vietnam-Cambodia victory over the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.
Q1. Vietnam states that its troops liberated the Cambodian people from the Khmer
Rouge. What is your point of view about this?
ANSWER: It is important to remember the Cold War context of the late 1970s. The
world was divided into two camps. The term “liberation” was interpreted differently
by those in the socialist (or communist) camp and those opposed to the socialist camp
(imperialists). If we leave this semantic argument to the past it is my view that Vietnam
freed the Cambodian people from the murderous Khmer Rouge regime.
Q2. Why is it claimed that Vietnam invaded Cambodia in the late 1970s?
ANSWER: In the late 1970s those who opposed socialism in Vietnam argued that
Vietnam was seeking to create a socialist/communist Indochina Federation under
Vietnamese hegemony. Little was known in the outside world about the mass killings
of the Cambodian people under the Khmer Rouge or the continual Khmer Rouge
attacks on Vietnamese border villages. When Vietnam intervened in Cambodia its
troops reached the border with Thailand. Thailand feared being attacked and called
on support from the international community.
The fact of the matter is that Vietnam intervened military in Cambodia in self-defence
(and to prevent encirclement by China) and to free the Cambodian people from the
brutal Khmer Rouge regime.
Q3. Forthy years after Khmer Rouge was destroyed, do you think that the world owes
Vietnam an apology?
ANSWER: The international community has changed its views over the past forty years
and politicians who criticized Vietnam in the late 1970s were replaced by governments
empathetic to Vietnam. For example, Australia witnessed a change of government in
1983 with the election of the Labor Government under Bob Hawke. His foreign
minister, Bill Hayton, sought to end Vietnam’s isolation and to promote peaceful
resolution to the conflict in Cambodia
Looking back forty years, there is now much greater understanding of the extent of
the mass killings in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge and the reasons for Vietnam’s
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intervention. Once Vietnam withdrew its military forces in 1989 the international
community shifted and in the short space of a few years normalized relations with
Vietnam and welcomed its membership in ASEAN.
Q4. It was not until November 16, 2018, that the United Nation used the term
“genocide” to describe Pol Pot's brutal regime. What has it taken so long forty years
after the Khmer Rouge were destroyed. What is your assessment?
ANSWER: The term genocide has both a legal meaning and a popular meaning. In 1948
the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide. Article II of this Convention defined genocide as:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,
a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(£) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(e) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(rf) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The popular meaning equates genocide with mass murder.
In the context of the Cambodian conflict, the term genocide became highly emotive
implying that the Khmer Rouge were equivalent to Nazi Germany and that the mass
murder of Cambodians was equivalent to the extermination of the Jews.
The legal argument over genocide focused on: did the Khmer Rouge intend to
exterminate all Cambodians as a race or only those they viewed as their enemies? The
Khmer Rouge was certainly a murderous regime. It has been estimated by the
Cambodian Genocide Project at Yale University that 1.7 million Cambodians or 21% of
the population perished under the Khmer Rouge.
On November 16, 2018, the United Nations-backed Cambodian Tribunal (known
officially as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia) convicted two
Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, of the crime of genocide for
the first time because of their efforts to exterminate the Muslim Cham and
Vietnamese ethnic minorities. This verdict gave legal meaning to the definition of
genocide in the 1948 Convention; previous Khmer Rouge leaders were convicted of
crimes against humanity.

Suggested citation: Carlyle A. Thayer, “Vietnam’s Intervention in Cambodia: Invasion

or Liberation?” Thayer Consultancy Background Brief, January 9, 2019. All background
briefs are posted on Scribd.com (search for Thayer). To remove yourself from the
mailing list type, UNSUBSCRIBE in the Subject heading and hit the Reply key.
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Thayer Consultancy provides political analysis of current regional security issues and
other research support to selected clients. Thayer Consultancy was officially
registered as a small business in Australia in 2002.